A recent photo of Mark Zuckerberg taken at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this past weekend has sent the Internet all aflutter with reactive commentary.
The photo, which depicts the Facebook CEO smiling as he saunters down an aisle, flanked by convention-goers decked with Samsung headgear, has made websites and folks on social media fear that some sort of Orwellian future is imminent.
Let's just call the photo what it is: a shot from a Samsung presentation.
This photo of our new overlord marching amongst his plugged in subjects is really something pic.twitter.com/VP3iB6rfws
— Owen Williams ⚡️ (@ow) February 21, 2016
As Mashable noted, the picture was taken during Samsung's MWC event, which also featured a chance to try out some of its VR tech on-site. What makes the photo, which many have called "creepy" due to smiling denizens/presumed Zuckerberg acolytes featured in the background, was taken before the attendees knew Zuckerberg was in the room. Indeed, the image shows the CEO is on his way to the stage to surprise the guests. When you look at it that way, the kerfuffle (and ensuing comparisons to Noam Chomsky's compendium of worst-case scenarios, not to mention The Matrix) makes the whole uproar a bit depressing: essentially turning a nice surprise into something laughable. What also dulls the theme of "tech-induced apocalypse now" in the pic is the original poster, which happens to be Zuckerberg himself.
The Facebook founder uploaded it and a series of other photos in an effort to publicize the strong ties between Samsung, which manufactures the gear needed for Zuckerberg's full-fledged VR experience, and Facebook, which provides the software. Here's a summary of what Zuckerberg spoke about after someone shot the photo below — given the childhood "dream" (i.e., the animus toward developing VR) he describes is more or less granting a exploration and wonder to VR users is a little counterintuitive to the "brick in the wall" rhetoric getting thrown about on the Web:
"I told the story of when I was 11 years old and first learning to program computers, I used to sit in my middle school math class, write code in my notebook and sketch images of a world where you could not only navigate to a 2D website, but transport yourself to a completely different place in reality. I've been waiting for it to be possible to create this experience, and today it finally is."
is this picture an allegory of our future ? the people in a virtual reality with our leaders walking by us. pic.twitter.com/ntTaTN3SdR — Nicolas Debock (@ndebock) February 21, 2016
While hyperbole and hysterics go hand-in-hand when it comes to Internet culture, there are certain situations that, when it comes down to it, are inappropriate to apply either attribute to — and this is one of them. This isn't some hint at a future dastardly plan for world domination. It is what it is: Zuckerberg literally just walking from one point of the room to the other using the only accessible floor space available.
Make whatever Orwellian comparison you will, but the objective facts remain: it's a picture of a VR demo, and and an obvious one, at that.
Check out our video on opening day highlights from MWC 2016 in the video clip below.
Source: Facebook
